The GOP debate: 7 takeaways

The CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa, Fla. —the second in a string of five Republican meet-ups coming in rapid succession—was an opportunity to gang up on Rick Perry and his onstage rivals took full advantage.

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Here are seven takeaways from Monday’s debate.

Mitt Romney came prepared

Romney is, plain and simple, a good debater. Whether that helps him with Republican voters remains to be seen, but he did not make any real mistakes, and he managed to land some blows on Rick Perry.

The former Massachusetts governor is fighting to at least remain the co-frontrunner with Perry, and he certainly delivered a spirited performance — jabbing at Perry, who stood at the podium next to him, throughout the two-hour event.

Romney lured Perry into a trap in their back-and-forth on Social Security and Perry’s ‘Ponzi scheme’ characterization, reminding the Texas governor, when he said he wanted to have a “conversation” about the path forward, that they were having one right then and there.

While Romney still has a bit of fine-tuning to do on his answer on Massachusetts health care, his answer was passable on a topic that will never be winner for him. And he held his own on the questions about his jobs record, faring better than he did at the Reagan Presidential Library when he got a bit tongue-tied discussing Bain Capital.

In some cases, Romney was overprepared, with a few overly verbose responses. And his comments on bringing a bust of Winston Churchill to the White House was just a tad prepackaged, and likely to remind some viewers of his authenticity issues.

But the broad takeaway was that he had a good night, and won on points.

Rick Perry did not come prepared

Perry divided his time equally between offense and defense in the last debate. This time, he went for a more subdued approach — but it turns out that being calm doesn’t totally agree with Perry, whose appeal is rooted in his no-holds-barred approach.

Perry started out fine, landing some zingers on Romney, including one about showing his poor hand at playing poker. The Texas governor also did an adequate job of defending himself, despite some boos, on providing in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants, on his stand against a border fence and, for the most part, on his jobs creation record.

But his answer on an executive order he signed requiring pre-teen girls to receive a vaccination preventing HPV was, to put it mildly, poor. He sounded defensive, stuck by his standard explanation , and uttered a sentence that he will probably regret when it shows up in an ad: “I raised $30 million and if you’re saying I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended,” he said, referring to pay-to-play allegations about contributions from the drug company that manufactured the vaccine.